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A PROGRAMME 
FOR PEACE 



BY - 



HENRY WICKHAM STEED. 




PUBLISHED BY THE BOHEMIAN NATIONAL 

ALLIANCE BY SPECIAL PERMISSION OF 

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. 

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A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 

— by — 

HENRY WICKHAM STEED 

of the "London Times" 



Reprinted from the 'Edinburgh Review' by special permission 

of the Author. 



Published by the 
BOHEMIAN NATIONAL ALLIANCE 



NOTE. It should be born* in mind that this article was written principally 
for British readers. 



Henry Wickham Steed: 

A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE. 



ON the morning of Saturday, March 4, the thirteenth 
day of the battle of Verdun, I stood, with others 
on a low spur to the north-west of the town and heard, 
rather than watched, the preparation of the second German 
attack upon the village of Douaumont. A few hundred yards 
below us French batteries were snapping out defiance at the 
invisible German guns across the Meuse and beyond the 
nearest heights. How many guns of all calibres were in action 
on both sides I cannot tell — many hundreds certainly, 
perhaps thousands. Quick jets of flame would spurt from un- 
expected position, huge shells would drone across the valley 
and burst with terrific clatter into cloudlets of dirty, black- 
grey smoke, but even the stray gleams of anaemic sunshine 
that broke through the curtain of mist and sleet revealed little 
of the grim work in progress. It was like a severe spring 
tempest, with peal upon peal of rattling thunder, near and 
far, in a hilly landscape half hidden by sheets of snow and 
hail — but a tempest rendered tragic by the consciousness 
that, at every detonation, the devoted French infantry, some 
of the finest and most intelligent men in the world, were 
being dismembered, buried alive, or slain outright. Yet the 
uppermost feeling at the moment and on the spot was one of 
impatience at being merely a listening spectator, not a com- 
batant. Only on returning westwards and seeing* fresh 
reserves of sturdy humanity rushing towards the shambles 
in huge motor lorries, did reflection overcome the lingering 
thrill of the distant strife, and the question arise insistently, 
'Why? Why?* 






HENRY WICKHAM STEED 



Little by little, the question transformed itself into a hard 
resolve, into a determination not consciously formed but 
elementary, like hunger or thirst, — 'Never again! Never 
'again shall the fiends in human shape that let loose this orgy 
'of wickedness upon the world be permitted to hold mankind 
'to ransom, and to measure the liberties of their superiors in 
civilisation by the might of their own scientific savagery and 
organised lust of whealth and power!' 

Hard upon the 'Why?' with its attendant resolve, followed 
the 'How?'; and before a clear notion as to ways and means 
could delineate itself in the mind came an angry wish that 
every minister and diplomatist, politician and publicist, 
whose voice may be heard or whose influence be felt in the 
determination of peace, should see what we had seen, hear 
what we had heard, feel what we had felt. A period of 
compulsory presence on or near a battlefield, of salutary 
exposure to shell-fire, of obligatory visit to ruined towns and 
villages, ought indeed to be an indispensable qualification 
for every man who aspires or may chance to be in a position 
to influence conditions of peace. How many suave sooth- 
sayers would find their words die on their lips how many 
political pontiffs would doubt their own infallibility, how 
many leisurely recliners in well-padded chairs would feel 
their sluggish blood tingle with an unwonted intensity of pur- 
pose, could they have direct experience of what war means, 
and realise the positive criminality of any failure to exact 
reparation to the uttermost from those who have caused it! 
The truth that only by prolonged punishment will it be poss- 
ible to correct the impulses of those who sought to attain their 
ends by bringing woe upon others might then burn itself 
into flaccid minds and tighten lax moral sinews. 

The war caught us unprepared. Shall peace, which some 
of our political wiseacres aver will come as a thief in the 
night, finds us also unprepared? Our unpreparedness, 

they say, was the best proof of the purity of our pacific intent- 
ions. It was also a proof of the sleepy gullibility of our 
statesmen. On that point much will presently have to be said, 
and the brows of those who, being watchmen, failed to watch, 



A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 



or who, watching, saw and gave not alarm, will have to be 
suitably branded with the mark of guilt. Even now, after 
twenty months of war, they show little sign of being animat- 
ed by the stern spirit, or of regarding the future with the 
penetrating vision that is indispensable if we and our Allies 
are to secure ourselves against a recurrence of the present 
catastrophe. We need to look and think ahead and to 
mobilise for peace. Whenever the conditions of peace be- 
come a question of immediate interest, and the suspension, or 
even the end, of hostilities is in sight, the blatant voice 
of crankdom will be heard again and every philanthropic 
or economic quack will cry his wares aloud in the market- 
place. Before this can happen it behoves every serious 
student of national and international affairs to make up his 
mind, while still under stress of war, as to the kind of Europe 
he would wish to see rebuilt upon the ruins of the Europe 
of 1914; and, having taken counsel of his fellows, to assist 
in formulating so sound a peace doctrine and in securing for 
it so large and solid a support of public opinion that no 
maudlin statesman or cynical diplomatist will dare to betray 
its fundamental postulates. In these matters the peoples 
of the British Empire cannot afford to 'trust the 'Government.' 
After having saved the Empire by their exertions, in conjuc- 
tion with those of the Allies, they will need to save it again 
for the welfare of future generations by the soundness of 
their instinct and the vigour of their pacific purpose. 

Let it not be said that peace conditions ought not to be 
conceived in a war-spirit. The peace we shall need to 
impose upon the enemy should be no ordinary peace. It 
cannot be a pact concluded, with honourable give and take, 
between two parties of belligerents who have learned to 
respect each other. It should be the kind of peace which 
a strong chief of frontier police dictates to marauding tribes- 
men. This war has been as an earthquake laying bare the 
foundations of European civilisation and revealing the na- 
tional character of the shares in the fray. These characters 
are not likely to change within a calculable future. The 
nature of the German people, as we have learned to know 



HENRY WICKHAM STEED 



it during this war, is its real nature. As long as the Germans 
were week and divided against themselves, their brutality 
and greed concerned chiefly themselves. But, with nation a 
unification and the direction of the national will by an 
ambitious dynasty they became a peril to mankind. It is 
against the revival of this peril in an active form that the Allied 
peoples mjust compel their Governments to guard. A strong 
peace policy, carefully thought out in the present war at- 
mosphere and adhered to despite the fatigue that may accomp- 
any the last phases of the struggle, will be the best, nay, the 
only safeguard against a reccurence of the German danger. 

The British Empire, which will have suffered less than any 
of the Allies during the struggle, is in duty bound to exert 
its whole power to make peace permanent. In its navy it 
wields a weapon that can ensure the adoption of whatever 
terms the Allies may formulate. It can decline to raise the 
blockade of Germany or to recognise the German flag on 
the high seas until Germany has made full reparation for the 
wrong she has done. The method of ensuring the adoption 
of the necessary peace terms is, however, a matter of less im- 
mediate importance than the discussion of what those terms 
shall be; and, in the drafting of those terms, the chief aim 
to be pursued in the creation of a Europe so constituted 
that German attempts to dominate it by force of arms or 
economically shall henceforth be hopeless. 

It is often said that the Allies cannot hope permanently 
to subjugate or enfeeble a nation of 65,000.000 or, if the 
German Austrians be included, of 75,000.000 souls. From 
this premiss it is argued that no attempt should be made, after 
an Allied victory, to interfere with the internal arrangements 
of the German Empire or to pursue a 'vindictive' policy. 
Smug humanitarians who have neither fired a shot nor seen 
a shot fired in the war will remind us of the advantages 
secured to Germany by Bismarck's 'magnanimous' treatment 
of Austria in 1 866, and will warn us that we cannot impoverish 
Germany without limiting her future power to trade with us, 
and, consequently, without impoverishing ourselves. Before 
the war ends, it may be hoped that a sense of the enormity 



A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 



of the crime committed by Germany in provoking it will have 
become keen enough in England, as it already is in the British 
Dominions, to rob this pernicious nonsense of its befuddling 
power. But, inasmuch as the good-natured foolishness of 
Englishmen is inexhaustible, it is necessary at once to demolish 
the mistaken or interested conception upon which these 
arguments are based. 

There is no parallel between the situation of 1 866 and 
that of the Allies in this war. Bismarck's 'generous' treat- 
ment of Austria was intended to facilitate German aggression 
upon France and to remove a potential obstacle to Prusian 
hegemony in Europe. It was meant to spare the pride and 
the material interests of the Hapsburgs and their peoples 
against the day when they could be cajoled or coerced into 
alliance with Germany. It was conceived as a first step 
towards the practical annexation of Austria-Hungary by 
Germany: that is to say, as a preliminary to the policy of 
'peaceful penetration' which Germany has since developed 
with such treacherous virtuosity in other countries besides 
Austria. Far better would it have been for Austria and 
for Europe had Bismarck failed to prevent his Sovereign 
from inflicting upon the Hapsburgs a galling wound. They 
would then have been compelled to set their house in order 
and seriously to seek reliable Allies against the Prussian 
victors. As it was, Bismarck's 'magnanimity' presently 
enabled Germany to acquire working control of Austria- 
Hungary and to use her 50,000.000 inhabitants as retainers 
of the Hohenzollerns. The advantages which Germany has 
derived from having at her disposal this mass of Menschen- 
material to serve as cannon fodder are immense — scarcely 
less important than the services rendered her by the Skoda, 
Wittkowitz, and other Rothschild arsenals in Austria. The 
advantages which Austria has derived from her association 
with Germany are, on the contrary, bankruptcy, famine, loss 
of independence, and, if the Allies do their duty, permanent 
disruption. 

Against Bismarck's magnanimity in 1866 should be set off 
his treatment of Denmark in 1864 and of France in 1871. 



HENRY WICKHAM STEED 



How keen was his regret in later years that, through a mis- 
calculation, he had then failed to 'bleed France white!' 
The present war was intended by Germany to do what the 
Treaty of Frankfurt had failed to accomplish ; and if, by any 
chance, Germany had been able to and to land a force in 
England, our partisans of 'magnanimity' would have been 
taught a lesson that might have disturbed even their incor- 
rigible faith in German highmindedness. 

The task of the Allies is not to seek, in misunderstood 
history, precedents for the solution of an entirely unprecedent- 
ed problem, but to deal with the problem itself on its merits. 

It is true that an entire people cannot be punished for 
murderous brigandage as an individual would be punished; 
but it can be taught, as individuals have to be taught, that 
brigandage and murder do not pay. This lesson has to be 
inculcated directly upon the present generation of Germans, 
and in such manner that its chastening effect may be felt by 
future generations. After the war the Allies cannot simply 
resume their former relations whit Germany. They must 
for a long time to come have few dealing with her other than 
those that may be necessary to secure full reparation to 
Belgium, Northern France, Serbia and Poland. Some meta- 
physicians, posing as economists, have enunciated the doctrine 
that we cannot impoverish Germany without impoverishing 
ourselves. If that be true, the answer must be: Let us 
rather be impoverished and secure than see Germany go 
unpunished and her victims denied indemnity. But it 
has yet to be proved that by economic alliance between the 
various portion of the British Empire and between it and 
our Allies, by developing our and their recources, we shall 
not only not be impoverished but shall gain in clean pros- 
perity. Germany, it may be said, will trade with neutrals; 
and as we cannot help trading with neutrals, we shall be in- 
directly trading with Germany. This question of relations 
with neutrals will require firm and careful treatment. 
France, for instance, who is setting an example in so many 
things, is already dealing with it. The French commercial 



A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 



service, which is ably organised, is already 'blacklisting* 
neutral firms which are known to have placed themselves 
at the disposal of Germany during the war. Those firms 
will do no more business with French firms for many a long 
day. Should not our commercial service, which has accumul- 
ated much valuable information on the subject of the assistance 
given to the enemy by neutral trades, also begin to prepare 
its 'black list' for future use? 

In trade, as in all other matters, there should be preferential 
treatment between the Allies after the war. Neutrals will 
fall into several classes. Countries which, like the United 
States, have shown, on the whole, good will towards the 
Alied cause and have understood its significance for the 
future of humanity; governments which, like that of Spain, 
have 'played the game* to the best of their power; and 
possibly little States like Denmark, that have cowered de- 
fencless under the fist of the German bully, will be entitled 
to special consideration. But States which have clandestinely 
sided with and helped the enemy or have deliberately hamper- 
ed the Allies during the war; peoples which, while able to 
defend themselves against eventual German aggression, have 
yet believed in and wished for the success of German arms, 
must be regarded as second-class neutrals. The economic 
and financial arrangements and practices that ceased at the 
beginning of August 1914 can never return. The old order 
of things in Europe passed away for ever when the Germans 
crossed the Belgian frontier. The leaders of the Allied 
peoples should therefore cease to stumble backwards into 
the future with their eyes wistfully fixed on the past and their 
minds filled with longing to save as much as possible of its 
effete arrangements. They should resolutely face the new 
conditions, actual and prospective, in which the wealth of 
individuals and of the nation, their trade and their industries, 
will be as truly parts of the national defensive system as are 
armies and navies. i 

In other words, a war temper must animate our statesmen, 
politicians, and public. Hitherto many of our public 



1 HENRY WICKH AM STEED 



men have displayed only a regretful peace temper. They 
have acted and spoken as though they expected — some of 
them indeed have never ceased to expect — peace to 'break 
out* at any moment. Their chief preoccupation has been 
how, on the 'outbreak' of peace, to return to ante bellum 
conditions with the least loss of time and of money, and will 
the least dislocation of their views and habits. Have we 
not heard Sir Edward Grey bewail, again and again, the 
wickedness of Germany — because she refused to attend 
a diplomatic conference upon the Sarajevo assassination? 
He seems really to have believed that Germany, after having 
carefully prepared for many years the wherewithal for the as- 
sassination of Europe, and having secured a most advant- 
ageous pretext for the consummation of her premeditated 
crime, would meekly take part in a diplomatic conference 
during which her prospective victims might have had time 
to divine her purpose. He appears still not to perceive that 
the Conference of Ambassadors of 1912-1913, over which 
Germany and Austria allowed him to preside, was designed 
by Germany to gain time for the completion of her naval, 
military, and diplomatic preparations, while convincing him 
of her good faith and thus increasing the likelihood of British 
neutrality during her onslaught. Men of this temper can- 
not be trusted to reconstruct Europe in the way in which 
Europe must be reconstructed if this war is to be final, and not 
merely a prelude to other wars fought in less advantageous 
conditions. Unless the British Empire is to betray its trust 
to its peoples and to its Allies, our Foreign Minister, not less 
than our Prime Minister and our Generals, need to be men fill- 
ed with the war temper. 

Hitherto only one of our present Ministers has shown, 
from time to time though not constantly, sign of the true 
war temper. It has been reserved for the Prime Minister 
of Australia, Mr. Hughes, to display it in its fulness. The 
response evoked by the speeches in which, in the terms ap- 
plied by him to Mr. Lloyd George, he 'used words as an in- 



A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 11 



strument to action, 'not as a substitute for it,' showed how 
srong is the inarticulate war temper among our people. The 
appearance of Mr. Hughes and the reception given to his 
speeches have been the most heartening phenomena in the 
non-military public life of the British Empire since the beginn- 
ing of the war. We can be grateful to him without need- 
ing to acclaim him as 'the man', or to believe that upon 
his frail shoulders we can unload the burden of our duty 
while we slumber yet awhile. No one man can save the 
Empire or the Allied Cause. This war is essentialy a war 
of peoples, not of kings or dictators. But no people can 
act efficiently without some crystallisation of its ideas, some 
canalisation of its political instincts. Those who have given 
thought to the matter should therefore put forward their 
conception of the practical objects to be attained by the war, 
if only in the hope of provoking a discussion that may help 
to clear up obscure points and to further the acceptance of 
a general programme. In this hope I venture tentatively 
to draw up a list of what seem to me the essential postulates 
of a lasting peace. 

( 1 ) That the Allies win the war so thoroughly as to be 
able to dictate their terms. An inconclusive peace, follow- 
ing upon even a victorious war, would be but a prelude to a 
fresh period of armaments and of preparation for a struggle 
still more cruel. 

(2) That, as a preliminary step to the winning of the 
war, the British people entrust its management to a few men 
filled with the war spirit and determined to conquer literally at 
all costs. 

(3) That the co-ordination of Allied effort, and particul- 
arly of Franco-British effort, be carried much farther than it 
has hitherto been. To this end the British forces in France 
should be regarded as an integral part of the French Army, 
and should receive orders, not merely suggestions or advice, 
from the French Commander-in-Chief and his Chief of Staff. 
Just as the French Navy is, in practice, subordinate to the 



12 . HENRY WICKHAM STEED 



British Navy, so the British Army, with its reserves and 
resources, should be effectively subordinate to the French 
Army, which, in the conduct of a Continental war, is at least 
as superior to our Army as the British Navy is superior to 
the French Navy. 

(4) That as soon as a Government for War shall have 
been formed in Great Britain, a policy of economic alliance 
between the various parts of the Empire, with the help of 
statesmen from Oversea Dominion, shall be drafted on broad 
lines. 

(5) That this policy having been formulated and adopt- 
ed in principle, the British Empire, as a whole, shall concert 
with its Allies a scheme for economic defence against Germ- 
any and her allies both during and after the war. The 
objects of this scheme would be: — (a) To tighten the 
'blockade' of Germany; (b) to convince Germany and her 
allies that the longer they continue the struggle the more 
complete will be their economic ruin, and the more protract- 
ed the period of economic servitude through which they must 
pass until they have fully indemnified those of the Allies who 
have most suffered from Germany's action; (c) to establish, 
as a settled principle of Allied policy, that, until these indemni- 
ties have been fully paid, the British and Allied Navies will 
not recognise the German or any enemy flag upon the high 
seas; and that the Allies will exact such additional guarantees 
of the payment of these indemnities, by occupation of territory 
or otherwise, as may be deemed essential. 

(6) That, simultaneously with the formulation of an 
Allied economic policy, there shall be taken in hand the 
establishment of a definite scheme of European reconstruction, 
territorial and political, such a scheme to include: — 

(a) The restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to France; 

(b) The adjustment of Belgian territory in accordance 
with Belgian requirements; 

(c) The constitution of an ethnically complete Serbia in 
the form of a United States of Yugoslavia; 

(d) The constitution of a unified self -governing Poland 
under the Russian sceptre; 



A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 13 



(e) The constitution of an independent, or at least auto- 
nomous, Bohemia, including Moravia and the Slovak country 
of north-western Hungary; 

(f) The allotment to Rumania of the Rumane regions 
of Hungary and the Bukovina, provided that Rumania shall 
have helped effectively to liberate those regions from Austro- 
Hungarian rule; 

(g) The establishment of the freedom of the Bosporus 
and of the Dardanelles to shipping, after Russia has secured, 
or has been given, possession of Constantinople. 

(h) The completion of Italian unity by the inclusion 
within the frontiers of the kingdom of Italy of all Italian 
districts in the Trentino and the Carnic Alps, on the Triestine 
littoral and the Istrian coast; the establishment of Italian 
naval control in the Adriatic by the possession of Pola, Lissa, 
and Valona. 

I foresee the objections that, though the pastime of selling 
the bear's skin may be diverting, no practical object can be 
served by discussing conditions of peace before the enemy 
has been beaten, and that the concentration of attention upon 
'after the war' problems may distract the public mind from 
the much more serious business of winning the war. The 
force of these arguments is undeniable, but there are con- 
siderations which make it eminently expedient that a sound 
scheme of general peace conditions should be framed before 
hostilities end. The war may still last many months, perhaps 
years. The longer it lasts the more exhausted will all the 
belligerents become, and the more eager will be sections of 
public opinion in the Allied countries to secure a rapid settle- 
ment without overmuch haggling as to terms. Fatigue, 
masquerading as generosity, and unavowed pro-Germanism 
whispering 'Let bygones be bygones,' might become serious 
political factors unless the Allied peoples were agreed in 
advance upon a minimum peace programme. We do not 
know in what form proposals for peace will be made. The 
first proposal may be for an armistice, during which conditions 
would be debated. Such an armistice would oblige the 
Allies to keep their millions of men mobilised, ready to 



1 4 HENRY WICKHAM STEED 



resume hostilities should negotations break down. The 

longer the armistice and the more protracted negotiations, 
the more irksome would be the state of armed inactivity to 
the men in the field, and the keener the desire for a rapid 
settlement that would restore them to their civil occupations 
and relieve the burden upon taxpayers. In these circumstances 
the tendency to compromise upon essential points might be- 
come too strong for any Allied government to withstand. 
Germany, we may by sure, will seek to exploit these possibil- 
ities. It behoves us, therefore, to guard against them in 
advance. 

The best means of guarding against them is the formulation 
of a clear-cut minimum programme which must be accepted 
by the enemy before any armistice can be conceded. The 
programme must include the giving of guarantees for its 
execution pending negotation upon points of detail. These 
guarantees must be such as to permit of the demobilisation 
of the greater part of the Allied armies, even if the fleets 
have to remain mobilised. The protraction of discussion 
upon points of detail for a few weeks or months would then 
matter little. 

Another and equally cogent reason for the formulations of 
a minimum peace programme in advance lies in the 
manoueuvres which Germany has already attempted, and is 
likely increasingly to attempt when she is forced to admit 
herself beaten. She may, for instance, suddenly evacuate 
Belgium in the hope of troubling Allied public opinion and 
of inducing neutrals to clamour for the cessation of hostilities. 
Belgium once evacuated, she would doubtless try to use her 
occupation of north-eastern France and Poland and the 
Austro-German occupation of Serbia as a lever to extort 
concessions from the Allies. If these manoueuvres were 
thwarted, there would remain a supreme expedient to which 
— as careful observers of German affairs have long apprehend- 
ed — the German Government may have recourse. Allied 
statesmen have repeatedly declared that 'we are resolved to 
destroy Prussian militarism.* Some have added that we 
are not fighting 'the German people*; and others have 



A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 15 



fatuously disclaimed any wish to 'humiliate' Germany. It 
is conceivable that when German bankers, shippers, manu- 
facturers and merchants see ruin staring them in the face, 
they may — not without a secret understanding with the 
Government — organise a bogus revolution for the benefit 
of Allied public opinion and seek the moral rehabilitation 
reserved for repentant prodigal children. This would be 
perhaps the most effective and, for the Allied cause, the 
most dangerous manoueuvre that the Germans could at- 
tempt. The organisation for effecting it lies ready to hand. 
The Social Democratic party, the working-class organisation, 
the press and other agencies, are well under control, and are, 
to a great extent, subject to Jewish influence. Were the 
Prussian Government, or even the Hohenzollern dynasty, 
convinced that a well-managed revolution would be the 
shortest path to comparative safety, they would scarcely 
hesitate to sanction it — with the understanding that, when 
once generous peace terms had been conceded by the Allies 
to a penitent German people and the Allied armies had been 
demobilised, an equally well-managed counter-revolution 
would set things right again. 

Against this possibility also the Allies need to be on their 
guard. It is not impossible, though, in present conditions, 
it is scarcely probable, that the German people, exasperated 
by its losses, will attempt a real and serious revolt; though 
it is hard to see what chance of success such a revolt could 
have as long as the able-bodied male population remains 
under arms in the field. But, in any case, it would be easy 
to distinguish a true from a false revolution. When we 
receive authentic information that the German masses are 
burning, murdering, and pillaging in their own cities with the 
same natural and innate ferocity as the German soldiers dis- 
played in Belgium and France, we may begin cautiously to 
inquire whether someting has not changed in Germany, and, 
after having convinced ourselves of the reality of the change, 
to take the new situation into account. The whole question 
of the attitude of the Allies towards Germany in future years, 
a*, indeed, the question of the internal constitution of Ger- 



1 6 HENRY WICKHAM STEED 



many herself, must depend very largely upon the conduct of 
the German people during the later phases of the war. We 
shall need very carefully to avoid the danger of mistaking our 
wish that there may be a change of heart in Germany for the 
reality of such a change. 

There is yet another and final argument in favour of the 
formulation of a minimum peace programme by the Allies 
before peace negotations begin. The reconstruction of 

Europe will be a hard task. Were the work to be left 
entirely to a diplomatic congress sitting in secret after the 
strain of war has passed away, the Allied peoples, to whose 
determination and self-sacrifice victory have been due, might 
find themselves confronted with a series of accomplished facts 
hardly differing in quality from the grotesque abominations 
perpetrated by the Congress of Vienna. As a general rule, 
professional diplomatists have no political conscience. Their 
whole training tends to exorcise it from them. Frequently, 
too, they are skilled ignoramuses. Foreign Ministers of 
parliamentary origin are often as ignorant as diplomatists, 
though less skilled. They are apt to be puppets whose 
gestures are controlled by wires pulled by permanent officials. 
No lasting or satisfactory European settlement can be attain- 
ed by such agents unless the general character of the work 
is marked out from them beforehand by the informed moral 
sense of their respective peoples. It is necessary, therefore, 
that the broad conditions of a European settlement should be 
discussed and agreed upon in advance by groups of competent 
persons in the Allied countries. It should be the task of 
these groups to explain to the public the bearings of the 
various questions awaiting solution, and to create a sound 
public opinion which may compel governments to *run 
straight.' However disheartening it may be that democratic 
governments should in this war have proved, on the whole, 
so inferior to their task of leadership and so incapable of 
rising above personal or party conceptions; however round- 
about, slow, and Uneconomical may be the method of driving 
a government, by pressure of public opinion, to do the duty 
it ought to have done spontaneously, there is at least this 



A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 17 



compensation, that in future we shall not be saddled with 
pseudo-dictators who might prove as incompetent for the 
tasks of peace as are our lawyers and other political hacks 
for the tasks of war. 

A democracy has to work out its own salvation, and 
cannot abdicate its governing functions without grave peril 
to itself. But it needs to watch the doings of its agents much 
more vigilantly than it has done hitherto and to make them 
feel that they are exercising executive power with halters round 
their necks. Groups of competent persons are now being 
formed in the principal Allied countries ; these groups will 
endeavour to keep in close touch with each other, so that 
their influence upon the public opinion and, through public 
opinion, their pressure upon the governments of their respec- 
tive countries, may be concordant and simultaneous. Some 
of the questions with wich they must deal will naturally be 
national rather than international or inter-Ally. British, 
Russian, and Italian opinion would have little to do with the 
restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to France, save in supporting 
the demands which the French nation might, upon mature 
reflection, formulate as indispensable. Similarly, the opinion 
of Allied countries would have lktle to say to any internal 
rearrangement of the British Empire, save in so far as it 
might affect their economic interests. Upon the demands 
of Belgium, whenever they are definitely formulated, the 
European Allies in general will have to pronounce, though it 
may be confidently expected that they will uphold every 
proposal that may tend to strengthen the political and eco- 
nomic position of Belgium in Europe and Africa. It is upon 
questions in regard to which there is no precedent for the 
guidance of public opinion — such as the Southern Slav, the 
Bohemian, and, to some extent, the Polish questions — that 
the work of agreement will be hardest. So many unfa- 
miliar factors will be involved, so many conflicting interests 
will come into play, that only by seeking solutions on firm 
and clear principles will it be possible to reach a tolerable 
settlement in time. Each of these questions — the South- 
ern Slav, the Bohemian, the Polish, and also the Rumanian — 



1 8 HENRY WICKH AM STEED 



affects die existence of Austria-Hungary. Indirectly also 
they bear upon the future political constitution of the German 
people. Old follies die hard, and there lurk in many quart- 
ers in this country and in France, if not, indeed, in Italy, 
mouldy convictions that Austria is indispensable to the Balance 
of Power in Europe, and that 'if she did not exist it would 
'be necessary to invent her.' Ideas such as this take no 
account of the fact that the Hapsburg Monarchy has been 
since 1866 potentially, and since 1879 actually, an appendage 
of Germany, and that her 'mosaic of peoples," which super- 
ficial observers expected to break up at the first shock, has 
been and still is in reality an element of strength to the 
German Empire. As long as these peoples art controlled 
by the Hapsburg Crown and are clamped together, as in an 
iron frame, by the power of the army, the bureaucracy, the 
police, the Church, and the Jews, so long will they be in- 
struments of Berlin and involuntary foes of the peace of 
Europe. The Hapsburg Monarchy must be broken into and 
broken up from outside by detaching from it those elements 
which, ethnically, 'belong elsewhere.' The fate of the re- 
mainder will depend largely upon the policy which the Allies 
may think expedient to adopt in regard to Germany. 

First among the fragments requiring detachment are the 
Southern Slav provinces — and here we reach an issue which, 
in its apparent simplicity and real complexity, is characteristic 
of many of the issues which the reconstruction of Europe will 
raise. Serbia has deserved so well of the Allies as to be 
entitled to any and every extension of territory to which she 
can legitimately lay claim. But Serbia has been in the past 
an exclusively Balkan and Orthodox State, over whose policy 
outside agencies have sometimes acquired undue influence. 
Should the Allied Governments think it sufficient to reinstate 
her in the territory she held before her overthrow last autumn, 
and merely to grant her sundry 'compensations,' they would 
probably render the Southern Slav question insoluble and 
seriously impede any satisfactory reconstruction of Europe. 
The creation of an ethnically complete Serbo-Croatia, or rather 
Yugoslavia, is an indispensable preliminary to any proper 



A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 19 



treatment of the Austrian question, upon a sound solution 
of which the future equilibrium of Europe depends. 

It would not be too much to say that, without the creation 
of a unified Yugoslavia, there can be no lasting tranquillity 
in Europe. Should any shortsighted attempt be made, or, 
if made, be persisted in, to keep the Croat or Catholic port- 
ions of the Southern Slav world separate from the Orthodox 
or Serb portions; should any mistaken solicitude for the mari- 
time outlets of Austria or Hungary be allowed to impede the 
union of the Croats, Slovenes and Serbs of Croatia, Slavonia, 
Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Slovene country and 
parts of Istria, with the Serbs of Serbia proper, the door 
would be left open to endless friction and intrigue from 
which there would probably be no escape save through 
another war. The United States of Southern (or Yugo) 
Slavia would include some 5,000.000 Catholic, some 
7,000.000 adherents of the Orthodox Church, and a few 
hundred thousand Serb Musulmans. The complete fusion of 
these various elements — which, be it noted, are all of one 
race and spoken language — might be as long a process as 
has been the fusion of the various States of Italy into one 
united Italian people; but, given political union and the 
cohesive force of a common patriotism under the pressure of 
common peril, the fusion would be but a question of time. 
With a strong Southern Slav State of 12,000.000 inhabitants, 
stretching from the Upper Save to the Vardar and from the 
Danube to the Adriatic, Europe would know that the Gate to 
the East would be securely held. Such a State could not 
menace Italian naval supremacy in the Adriatic nor impede 
the development of Italian commercial and linguistic influence 
in the Balkan. On the contrary, it would offer a wide field 
to Italian economic enterprise and give to Italian influence an 
opening such as it has not had since the fall of the Venetian 
Republic. With Trieste as a free port in Italian possession 
and under Italian administration, and with Fiume as a free 
port under Southern Slav administration, ample provision 
would be made for the needs of Hungarian and Austrian 
geaborne commerce Between Fiume and San Giovanni di 



20 HENRY WICKHAM STEED 



Medua there would be harbours in plenty for the maritime 
trade of Yugoslavia. 

The achievement of Southern Slav unity, coupled with the 
completion of Rumanian unity by the inclusion in the king- 
dom of Rumania of the Rumane district of Hungary and the 
Bukovina, would tend to reduce the kingdom of Hungary to 
its proper proportions and to leave the Magyars in possession 
of the central Hungarian plain. The process would require 
to be completed by the inclusion of the 2,000.000 Slovaks 
of north-western Hungary in a united Bohemian-Moravian- 
Slovak State that would stretch from the Saxon border to 
the Danube at Pressburg. Such a Bohemia would comprise 
some 12,000.000 souls, inhabiting a country in an advanced 
stage of industrial development and possessing great mineral 
wealth. The large Bohemian port of Usti (or Aussig) on 
the Elbe, of which the commercial importance rivals that of 
Trieste, and the development of Pressburg as a Danube port, 
would provide outlets for Bohemian trade; while proper 
international arrangements as to railway communications 
would give railway access to Trieste and Fiume, if not, in- 
deed, to northern ports. Like Yugoslavia, Bohemia would 
be vitally interested in resisting the encroachments of Germa- 
nism. The removal of these States from the orbit of 
Germanic control would weaken the aggressive force of the 
German people, and would tend to keep its political and 
military ambitions within bounds. 

This consideration applies with almost equal force to the 
reunion of Poland. The removal of Galicia from Austria, 
and of the Duchy of Posen and of Silesia from Germany, 
would deprive the Germans of ill-gotten sources of strength 
and wealth. The reconstruction of Poland will be no easy 
matter. A nation cannot be divided for nearly a century 
and a half and placed under three different systems of 
government and education without the separate fragments 
becoming in some measure differentiated. There are notice- 
able differences to-day between the Poles of Austria, the 
Poles of Russia, and the Poles of Prussia, however much 
these differences may be overshadowed by the intense Polish 



A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 21 



patriotism that animates them all. Umder a unitary regime 
these differences would tend to disappear. But, as mode- 
ration has not hitherto been regarded as the distinctive feature 
of the Polish national character, it is indispensable, both in 
the interest of the Poles themselves and in the interest of 
Europe, that a renewed Polish polity should not be left to fend 
entirely for itself. Poland should be attached to Russia in 
such manner that the welfare and integrity of the Polish 
nation cannot become a matter of indifference to the Russian 
Empire. Poland, however reconstituted — and on this point 
Polish views differ too widely to permit of any dogmatic 
scheme of settlement in detail — will need at once the pro- 
tecting hand of Russia and access to the Russian market. 
Without the Russian market, Polish industry, when it has 
recovered from the havoc of the war, would be likely to 
languish, despite the new openings which would be provided 
by the reversion to Poland, in one form or another, of the 
Polish ports of Dantzig and Konigsberg. Divorced from 
Russia, Poland would, moreover, fall into the position of a 
mere buffer State, a borderland between Russia and Ger- 
many, in whose affairs Petrograd and Berlin would be con- 
stantly tempted to interfere, with results deplorable alike to 
Europe, to Russia, and Poland. Reunion and self-govern- 
ment under the Russian sceptre should therefore be the watch- 
words of the Allies and of far-sighted Polish leaders. The 
pledge given to Poland in the Grand Duke's manifesto of 
August 1914, a pledge which the Emperor of Russia has 
repeatedly ratified, is the basis upon which the solution of the 
Polish question must be sought. 

Upon the necessity of completing Italian national unity, 
and of securing for Italy a position in the Mediterranean and 
in the Adriatic corresponding to her needs and to her just 
aspirations, little need be said. For Italy this war is less a 
war of conquest and territorial acquisition than a war of 
national safety, both material and moral. It has enabled 
her, after a period of diplomatic servitude, to take her place 
once more by the side of the free nations of the West; and 
it has afforded her an opportunity to escape from the German 



11 HENRY WICKHAM STEED 



control of her intellectual and economic life. But the Allies 
of Italy should not forget that she cannot suddenly change 
her commercial allegiance without serious detriment to her 
national economy unless they begin, during the war, to sub- 
stitute their own economic aid and influence for that of 
Germany. The people of Italy are very devoted to the ideals 
for which the Allies are fighting. No factors influenced more 
potently their decision to draw the sword than their indig- 
nation at the German treatment of Belgium and their horror 
at the sinking of the 'Lusitania.' They believe also in the 
principle of nationality to which they owe their existence, 
and which they, like the other Allies, are pledged to uphold. 
But they look for a helping hand during and after the war, 
and expect the Allies to sustain them, in trade as in arms, 
while the struggle against militant Germanism endures. 

Our duty to Russia is equally plain. It is to aid Russia 
in securing the possession of Constantinople and to place the 
economic freedom of the Straits upon unassailable foundations* 
to further the development of Russian resources, and to estab- 
lish between the Russian people and ourselves a communion 
of feeling and interests that shall withstand all efforts to 
undermine it. In our attitude towards Russia, as towards our 
other Allies, any hint of egoism, any display of calculating 
selfishness, would be fatal. The war which Germany sprang 
upon the world in August 1914 was essentially a war for the 
destruction of the liberties of Europe. It is a war of common 
defence against Germany that is being fought by all the 
Allied Powers. Without complete self-forgetfulness, we none 
of us can hope either to win the war satisfactorily or to impose 
upon the enemy conditions that will guarantee a lasting peace. 

Indeed, something more than any conditions which the 
Allies may be able to impose upon the enemy will be needed 
if peace is to be really permanent. Its foundations are being 
laid from day to day during the war by the conduct of the 
Allies towards each other. If, when hostilities cease, the 
stock of good will between the Allies and for their respect 
for each other should through any mismanagement prove to 
have been lessened during the course of the struggle, their 



A PROGRAMME FOR PEACE 23 

reciprocal engagement* will have lost virtue and the set- 
tlement of delicate questions will become extremely difficult. 
If, on the contrary, the rough-and-ready give-and-take that 
accompanies the working of every true alliance has resulted 
in an increase of good will and of eagerness to give each 
other the benefit of any doubt that may arise, it will be 
possible to find, in a large and trustful spirit, tolerable solu- 
tions for many an 'insoluble' problem. Hence the importance 
of inter-Ally propaganda, in order to make Great Britain 
better understood among the masses of the people in France, 
Russia, Italy, Japan, and reciprocally to generate in the minds 
of the masses of our own people feelings of effective sympathy 
for our Allies generally and for each Ally severally. Those 
who do such work are true apostles of peace, for, by striving 
to create and maintain instinctive cohesion among the Allies, 
they are not only thwarting in advance the efforts of the 
enemy to separate us one from another during the war, but 
are cementing relationships which, by enduring after the war, 
will convince the sound elements among the German people 
that only by a complete change of method and aspiration 
can Germany hope to regain admission to the family of 
civilised nations. 

I have deliberately refrained from touching upon the dif- 
ficult extra-European issue with which the Allies will have to 
deal either before or immediately after the conclusion of 
peace. Such questions are those of Persia, Armenia, Meso- 
potamia, Syria and Palestine, not to mention the whole 
problem of the repartition of the German possessions in Africa 
and elsewhere. Each and all of these questions might give 
rise to serious friction unless they were approached in the 
spirit of reciprocal confidence that makes it possible to speak 
frankly without giving offence or arousing suspicion of ulterior 
motives. Whether Persia be maintained as a quasi-indepen- 
dent State or placed directly under Anglo-Russian tutelage; 
whether Turkish Armenia come under Russian protection or 
be given an autonomy guaranteed by the Allied Great 
Powers; whether Mesopotamia become a British and Syria 
a French possession, or whether some other form of admi- 
nistration be found, the value of the settlements adopted 



» 



will depend almost entirely upon the spirit in which they 
are conceived and upon the relations which will thereafter 
exist between the Allies. Should peace, even a victorious 
peace, leave any feeling that one or other of the Allied 
Powers had sought its own profit, or had, while professing 
to exert its utmost strength, cannily let the main burden rest 
on the shoulders of others, then that Power will have suffered 
moral defeat, and, in any future contest, will have to fight 
its battles alone. Our business is to take care that no such 
suspicion should rest upon ourselves. This is why so much 
importance attaches to questions like the rise of freights, and 
the consequent prohibitive prices of coal and other necessaries 
which we help to supply to our Allies. The fact that, mainly 
through lack of timely and concerted official action, British 
shipowners have been allowed to make gigantic profits out 
of the needs and sufferings of others naturally creates com- 
ment among our Allies, whose irritation is not assuaged by the 
reflection that, owing largely to the same lack of timely 
action, the shipowners belonging to neutral and to Allied 
countries have also been able to take advantage of the 
prevailing high freights. Again, any suspicion that we are 
wilfully backward in recruiting and training our armies, or 
niggardly in pouring them into the common stock, would 
naturally diminish the good will of our friends in France, 
Russia, and Italy. There is indisputable evidence of the effect 
produced in Russia by the manoeuvres of German agents 
who disseminated the saying 'England will fight to the last 
drop — of Russian blood.' We cannot seek out and refute 
these calumnies one by one, but we can and happily are now 
striving to promote a better understanding of our position 
and purpose in the minds of our Allies. Yet, when all has 
been done, it remains true that the first requisite of our 
present position is to demonstrate by our every word and 
act our loyalty to our Allies and our determination to carry 
on the war until our enemy is crushed. This is the first 
postulate of a peace programme, for, without it, the signing 
of a peace treaty will bring us, not the assured prospect of 
fruitful tranquillity, but the certainty of future trouble. 



